


Truth

by LilacNoctua



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, F/M, First Kiss, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Kissing, Light Angst, Mild Language, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Romance, Secret Relationship, Tenten briefly dates someone else, Truth or Dare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27378121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacNoctua/pseuds/LilacNoctua
Summary: And so maybe she ought to blame him, just a little bit, for having the nerve to kiss her that way, and then expect her not to have fallen in love with him. Perhaps it was his fault for being so foolish as to hold her as though she were the only girl on earth that mattered and then expect her to believe that there were no real feelings behind any of it.Neji and Tenten have been teammates and friends for years. Their bond is unshakeable. Or at least, it was until one kiss changed everything.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Comments: 54
Kudos: 85





	1. Just a Dare

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place in the same universe as my [Worthwhile](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729480/) series, but several years earlier.

Later, when Tenten thought about who was to blame for this calamity, aside from herself or Neji of course, she would think first of Lee. It was all his idea in the first place. 

He announced in the middle of training one day that he was worried Sakura must be lonely. After all, Sasuke was long gone, and no one had heard from Naruto in almost a year. She spent all her time stuck to Lady Tsunade like glue. She needed more youthful companionship, he insisted. So, wouldn’t it be nice if they invited her to spend Saturday night with them at Gai-sensei’s place? Neji snorted and rolled his eyes at Lee’s obviously hopeful expression, but Tenten volunteered to ask her.

So maybe it was Sakura’s fault. After all, she accepted Tenten’s invitation and asked if she could invite Ino and Hinata as well. Naturally, Hinata invited Kiba, and at the last minute, Shino. Ino dragged along Shikamaru and Choji. What was supposed to be a quiet Saturday night sleepover quickly became an actual party. But Tenten could hardly blame Sakura for wanting to spend a night with her friends instead of her mother or her temperamental mentor.

Perhaps then, it was Gai-sensei’s fault. Really, who leaves a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year olds in an apartment with a mountain of sugary snacks and no supervision on a Saturday night? That was hardly fair either though. When Gai had offered them the apartment, he had thought it was just going to be the three of them, and they stayed there all the time. Not to mention, she suspected that Gai was spending the night at Kakashi’s place, and knew that he would have checked to make sure that Kurenai-sensei would be at home next door if he was going out.

It definitely wasn’t Hinata’s fault. Nothing ever was. Hinata sat next to her and helped her twist Neji’s long hair into an elaborate coiffure, complete with butterfly clips.

“Oh Neji, you’re so pretty!” Hinata sighed, holding up a mirror for him to look at. 

Neji made a face. “I look just like Grandmother.”

And she could rule out Choji, Kiba and Shino who were all slumped on the couch watching tv and mindlessly stuffing their faces with snacks. 

By this point in the evening, Lee was clumsily attempting to flirt by challenging Sakura to an arm wrestling match. She grew increasingly frustrated as his arm remained standing upright on the table, as though carved from stone. She stood up from her chair to lean her full weight against his arm, screeching.

“That is against the rules, Sakura!” Lee hooted gleefully, his arm still not budging. Finally Sakura conceded defeat and came to sit beside Hinata, red in the face and puffing.

It could have been Ino’s fault. She was painting Shikamaru’s toenails bright blue while he complained about what a drag this all was.

“Don’t move, you’ll smudge it,” she scolded him. “If you’re bored let’s play a game.”

“What, like shogi?”

“No, not like shogi, you old geezer.” She paused to stick her tongue out from between her teeth in concentration as she painted a tiny white cloud onto his big toe. When she looked up again she suggested, “Why don’t we play truth or dare!”

“Come on, that’s kids’ stuff,” Shikamaru whined. 

“I think it will be fun,” Sakura piped up. “We haven’t played that since our academy days.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Hinata added.

“Oh now we’re talking,” Kiba slid off the couch to join their circle on the floor. “Blackmail material!.”

“If anyone here has blackmail worthy secrets, it would be you, Kiba,” Neji pointed out, removing clips from his hair and stacking them in a neat pile on the coffee table. Tenten watched from the corner of her eye as his hair tumbled down his back.

“What about Lee?” Kiba demanded. “He’s weird. I bet he’s got secrets.”

Neji snorted and Tenten cackled. “Lee can keep a secret for about as long as Akamaru can go without licking his own butt.”

“Oh really, let’s see,” Kiba said. “Hey Lee, are you scared of Gaara?”

Lee bounced over from the kitchen and plopped himself down in their circle. “Of course not! Gaara is my very dear friend, and I admire him greatly. We had a rough start, but through the power of youth and the manly passion that burns within our hearts we have been able to reconcile our differences into what I feel will become one of the strongest and longest lasting friendships of my whole life.”

“He tried to kill you in your sleep,” Shikamaru protested. “I was there!”

“He was just going through a rough time,” Lee said dismissively. “Besides, he apologized.”

“Okay,” Kiba said. “Lee, it’s your turn.”

“Tenten! Truth or dare?”

“Dare.”

“I dare you to eat one of Gai-sensei’s ‘breakfast bites!’”

“Oh god, no!” Tenten cried. But she went to the fridge, brought out a strange green lump and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. She gagged slightly and slammed her fist down on the counter as she swallowed it. 

“If you’ll all excuse me,” she croaked. “I need to go brush my teeth.”

“Wait,” Sakura called. “It’s your turn.”

“Truth or dare, Sakura?”

“Truth.”

“Okay, tell the group what’s the worst thing you would do if you could pull off a perfect invisibility jutsu and not get caught,” Tenten commanded before hurrying into the bathroom to scrub the taste of “breakfast” out of her mouth.

Minty fresh again, she returned to the main room just as Shikamaru finished confessing to once having learned genjutsu specifically to trick the academy instructors into thinking he was paying attention when he was actually taking a nap. 

In the end, it was Shikamaru she wanted to blame the most. 

“Neji, truth or dare?” he asked, his chin jutting out as though issuing a challenge.

“Dare,” Neji decided, crossing his arms over his chest.

Shikamaru’s eyes slipped sideways towards Tenten and the corner of his mouth drew up in a calculating smirk. “I dare you to kiss Tenten.”

Ino gasped, and looked at Tenten apologetically. She had told him, of course she had. Well, that was the last time Tenten was going to tell these girls anything. All she had said was that she sometimes looked at Neji a little bit when they were training together, admired him, maybe got butterflies in her stomach sometimes when he dropped by so they could walk to the training field together. She risked a sidelong glance at Neji now. He was sitting very still, glaring at Shikamaru.

“No,” he said quietly. “I can’t do that.”

“We cannot start kissing teammates.” Lee tried to come to the rescue. “It could cause all sorts of tension and ruin teamwork.”

“Maybe we should consider how Tenten feels about this,” Sakura chimed in.

Tenten mustered up every bit of bravado she could and said, “What’s the big deal Neji? It’s just a kiss.”

Ino gasped again and hid her face in her hands as if she couldn’t bear to watch. Sakura was gripping Lee’s arm with both hands and Tenten could see that he was gritting his teeth. 

Neji turned to look at her with blank, flat eyes that gave her the uncanny impression that he was looking right through her. She nearly lost her nerve entirely. He stood up and motioned for her to do the same. Her knees wobbled as she turned to face him.

Kiba wolf whistled and Shikamaru laughed.

“You guys can’t watch,” Tenten protested.

“Oh yes, we can,” Choji protested.

“This is half the fun of truth or dare,” Shikamaru whined. “You don’t just dare someone to do something and then turn around while they pretend to do it.”

“Fine,” Neji said curtly. He took Tenten by the arm and pulled her into the kitchen. Everyone could still see them of course, but this way there was at least some distance. Neji planted himself squarely between Tenten and their little audience so all they could see was his back. Tenten had never noticed before, but this close up, his eyes were not a blank white, but had a peculiar opalescent quality, refracting the overhead lights in a hundred colours. 

“Neji,” she whispered. “I was just being silly, we don’t actually have to.”

“Do you not want to?” Neji asked, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him. 

That was a different question entirely. She could lie, but then she might miss her chance. And guilty as she might feel about it, a chance to kiss Neji was not something she was going to pass up so easily. She nodded.

Neji stepped closer and placed one hand on her waist, the other on her shoulder. Tenten wasn’t really sure where to put her hands. She settled for doing the same thing Neji had done, only in reverse. 

Neji stared at her for a long moment, then whispered, “Close your eyes.”

Tenten shut her eyes, too nervous to even peek through her lashes, and Neji’s lips settled against hers as softly as a butterfly alights on the petals of a flower. If this was what kissing was always like, then she had been missing out for sure. And this was  _ Neji  _ she was kissing. Neji whose mouth she couldn’t help but stare at every time he spoke, whose long silken hair smelled like spring rain, who had been her friend and teammate for years now but lately seemed to grow more attractive every day. This was Neji who was kissing her with impossibly warm, plush lips that moved against hers gently yet insistently, Neji whose hand left her shoulder to splay across her cheek and tilt her head to the side just so.

Tenten forgot how to breathe, her arms had wrapped themselves tightly around Neji’s back of their own accord. She could feel his heart racing in his chest as her own was skipping and stuttering almost painfully. There was a great cacophony of whistling and cheering from the living room and the spell which had bound Tenten and Neji together was broken. Each of them stepped away hastily, looking anywhere but at each other, and hurried back into the living room. 

Tenten found it difficult to stay present for the rest of the evening. She could feel Neji watching her but couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, worried about what she might find there. Meanwhile she kept zoning out of conversations as her mind replayed what had happened in the kitchen in slow motion. She could already tell she would lay awake all night thinking about it. 

Fortunately, Team Gai had long ago arranged a sleeping system for nights like this. In their first year as a team, she and Neji had tried to take turns sleeping next to Lee, but it always resulted in one of them being extremely cranky the next morning while the other was smug and well rested, and had generally been bad for team morale. The compromise was that Lee always slept in the middle and Tenten and Neji both had to suffer. As the small hours of morning ticked past, punctuated by the snores of their friends sleeping on the floor, Tenten inched closer to the edge of her side of the bed to avoid Lee’s continuously expanding starfish pose. The fact that he had grown nearly half a foot within the past year meant he was able to take up even more bed real estate than usual. There was a very good chance that soon the three of them would not all be able to fit into Gai-sensei’s bed. On the other side of the mattress, she could hear Neji shuffling around in irritation as well. 

“No no, the tortoise is not a frisbee,” Lee mumbled in his sleep. He flipped over suddenly, and Neji hit the floor. 

“That does it,” Neji whispered, standing up and glaring down at Lee. 

Tenten sat up. They stared at each other for a long moment and then Neji pressed a finger to his lips and twitched his head towards the balcony doors. 

In the end, Tenten could only ever blame herself. Maybe if she hadn’t followed him, if she had just laid back down and tried to sleep, none of this ever would have happened. Instead, she slipped out of bed and followed him out onto the balcony. 

Konoha stretched beneath them still and slumbering, the faces of the Hokages up on the mountainside wore hoods of shadow and a bright silver sickle moon reflected in Neji’s river pearl eyes. They stood side by side at the railing, barefoot and pajama clad and neither spoke. Neji’s left hand moved across the railing to cover her own. 

“Tenten,” he whispered finally. “I would like to give that another try. Without everyone watching this time.”

“Okay,” was all Tenten could think to say. 

Neji turned towards her, still holding her hand in his and she shuffled a little bit closer. She tried to suppress her trembling as she raised her free hand to Neji’s face, translucently pale skin as smooth as satin. Neji pressed their clasped hands against his chest and wrapped his arm around her waist as he leaned in to kiss her a second time. His lips against hers were bolder this time, less hesitant, as though he were no longer worried that she would slip away through his fingers. She could taste the faintest trace of his toothpaste still and something she suspected was lip balm. Her nose was full of that spring rain scent of his hair. Tenten peeked at him from beneath her eyelashes and found his own eyes closed, a dreamy expression on his face. She closed her eyes again and allowed herself to sink into him, attempting to memorize the way this felt, to not dwell on what it might mean.

When Neji finally pulled away he sighed blissfully and leaned his forehead against hers, where his marked skin was covered by a thin layer of bandages. He pulled her close against his chest.

And so maybe she ought to blame him, just a little bit, for having the nerve to kiss her that way, and then expect her not to have fallen in love with him. Perhaps it was his fault for being so foolish as to hold her as though she were the only girl on earth that mattered and then expect her to believe that there were no real feelings behind any of it.

*****

“Stop!” Gai barked. The whole team froze. Tenten finally looked up. She had been avoiding making eye contact with Neji, who had been avoiding making eye contact with her. This wouldn’t have been too terrible, except that Tenten was flinging kunai at him as he practiced his rotation technique. Neji was now clutching his leg where a kunai protruded from his thigh, just above the knee, and Lee had been forced to leap between them and snatch several more kunai out of the air before they could reach him.

Lee shook his head sadly. “This is exactly what I said would happen.”

“What on earth is going on with you kids?” Gai demanded. “Tenten, why aren’t you looking at your target? You could have killed both Neji and Lee. Neji, you should have been able to block that easily. What’s the matter?”

The training field fell silent. Neji and Tenten turned to look in opposite directions.

“Neji and Tenten kissed on Saturday night,” Lee explained.

“Hmm, I see,” Gai said slowly. 

“This has nothing to do with that,” Neji insisted angrily, yanking the kunai out of his leg and pulling a med kit out of his tool pouch.

“This has everything to do with that,” Tenten countered, equally angry.

“It was just a stupid dare,” Neji burst out.

“Was it though?” Tenten asked acidly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Okay, that’s enough.” Gai held up his hands. “Lee, come with me, we’ll see who can stand on one hand the longest. Tenten, you’re going to help Neji stitch up that wound and the two of you are not to come back until you’ve talked this out and can work as teammates again.”

“Forget it,” Neji growled. “I’ll just go home.”

“I don’t think so,” Gai said.

“Quit being such a baby, Neji.” Tenten grabbed his wrist and towed him towards the trees at the edge of the training field, purposely walking just a little faster than his injured leg could keep up. She forced him to sit down among the roots of an old oak tree and snatched the med kit out of his hand.

“Give me that,” Neji insisted, his voice as hard as steel. “We both know if you try to stitch my leg it will be scarred forever.”

Tenten flinched and handed the kit back. She fixed her eyes on a shrub to the left of Neji’s head and told herself that they were going to have this conversation and no matter what happened she wouldn’t cry. In the corner of her eye, she saw Neji preparing the needle and lining up the edges of the wound.

“It was just a stupid dare,” he said again as he made the first stitch.

“The first one, maybe,” Tenten said through gritted teeth.

Neji nodded. “The second one was just. . . a bad idea.”

“You didn’t seem to think so at the time,” Tenten pointed out.

“No,” Neji agreed softly. “But things look different in the light of day.”

“Oh really?”

Neji growled in frustration. “Tenten, you know better than anyone the shit I go through with my family. I can’t have someone in my life that I feel that way about. I just can’t.”

“So you admit it was something then?” Tenten prodded.

“Don’t push it, Tenten,” Neji hissed. “I said I can’t, and I mean it. I said it was nothing and I mean it.”

His eyes flicked away, focusing on her hands clasped over her knees instead of on her face.

“You’re lying.”

“What does it matter?” Neji demanded. “Lies or truth, none of it will do us any good. It should never have happened. I’m sorry that I allowed it to.”

“Don’t apologize to me as though I wasn’t there too,” Tenten spat. “And the truth does matter.”

“Does it?” Neji finally raised his eyes to hers. “Sometimes the truth hurts much worse than a lie, Tenten.”

“Who does it hurt? You or me?”

“Both of us.”

“Coward.” The word popped out of Tenten’s mouth before she could stop it.

“Maybe I am,” Neji whispered. “But it’s for your own good.”

“I’ll decide what’s for my own good, thanks,” Tenten snarled.

“Tenten, listen to me,” Neji pleaded as he tied off the thread and trimmed the end. “You’re my best friend. My best friend, okay? I don’t want to do anything or say anything that could jeopardize that. That is the most important thing to me.”

Tenten’s anger deflated immediately, she sat back on her heels and wrapped her arms around her knees. “You’re my best friend too, Neji.”

“So we agree on that at least,” Neji whispered with a weak attempt at a smile.

“But what do we do now?” Tenten whispered. She finally turned to look at him and saw the fear written across his face, the desperation in his eyes.

“Can we just forget about it?” Neji suggested. “Please. Can we just go back to how it was before?”

Tenten shrugged. “I guess we have to.”

Neji reached out and squeezed her shoulder gently. His touch burned her skin. She flinched, he snatched his hand away.

“I am sorry, Tenten,” Neji said softly. “I really, truly am.”

“You’re not lying about that part, at least,” Tenten said heavily.

“We’re going to be okay, right?”

“Yeah, Neji. Of course we are.”


	2. Forget About It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware that this chapter contains foul language, and threats implying sexual violence.

Tenten would swear that she tried. She tried to just forget the whole thing, not to lay awake at night, tangled in her sheets, staring at the ceiling, remembering the softness of Neji’s lips, the way he had held her so close. She tried not to daydream about him, not to let her eyes linger on him during training. She tried not to remember the hard edge in his voice and the fear in his eyes when he had told her it had meant nothing, tried not to cry whenever she inevitably did remember it. She tried to forget about it and just return to normal. 

And she was succeeding. It wasn’t too hard really, to fall back into their old patterns, to shove away messy feelings by reminding herself that feeling such things could cause her to lose her best friend. She couldn’t imagine a life without Neji, a life where Neji treated her like a stranger or kept a cool distance between them and so, in order to prevent that, pretending not to be completely head over heels in love with him seemed like a small sacrifice.

She could tell Neji was trying, too. She could tell because his smile when he met her outside her apartment to walk to the training field looked pained, because he went out of his way to avoid touching her if he didn’t have to, because he would never quite meet her eyes. She could see the effort he was making in the way he turned away sometimes when she laughed, the way he occasionally opened his mouth as though to say something and then snapped it shut again, his sudden preoccupation with ensuring that Lee was included in everything they did.

So they were both trying their best, and it was working. At least, it was until that mission. 

“Lee, you’re coming with me. We’ll cover the valleys to the south,” Gai announced. “Tenten, Neji, head north. Look for any signs that the bandits have passed through on any of those forest paths.”

“Yes, sir,” Neji agreed.

“But you’re not to engage them,” Gai reminded them sternly. “Any sign at all and you give the signal. At the same time, keep an eye out for a signal from Lee and myself.”

“Right.” Tenten nodded.

“All right, team! Let’s do it!” Gai shouted, sticking his hand out.

“Yeah!” Lee slammed his hand down on top of Gai’s.

The two of them turned to look expectantly at the other two. Tenten knew there was no point in trying to get out of it, so with an exasperated sigh, she slapped her hand down over Lee’s bandaged knuckles. She realized her mistake immediately. Neji shook his head and took a step back. Gai locked eyes with him, grinning widely, menacingly. Neji relented and stepped forward to gingerly place his hand over Tenten’s, leaning away as though she were a bomb that might explode at any moment. The skin of his palm felt clammy. 

“With the Power of Youth!” Lee shouted. Gai whooped while Neji and Tenten cheered half heartedly. They each threw their hands in the air and then Lee and Gai sprinted to the south while Neji and Tenten sped north. Tenten watched Neji out of the corner of her eye. His face was blank, unreadable. She stumbled over a root protruding from the forest floor and his hand shot out to steady her elbow. He released her immediately as soon as he was sure that she was balanced properly again.

“Watch yourself,” he said, voice carefully neutral.

“Neji,” she started to say.

“Later, Tenten,” he cut her off. “We have a job to do.”

“Of course,” she said with false brightness. She wasn’t even sure what she had been about to say anyway.

They worked out a strategy where Neji perched on a high outcropping of rock, scanning the trails with his Byakugan and directing Tenten by hand signals to check out any abnormalities he had noticed. They were dead ends. Footprints too old to be of interest, what looked like threads snagged on tree bark but was actually a tuft of rabbit fur, knife marks that turned out to have been made by the locals to signal which trees should be brought down for the winter fires. All afternoon Tenten was shinnying up and down trees to catch Neji’s signals, running back and forth along the paths, slipping in the mud, being snagged by brambles, and bitten by flies. After hours of this, she was exhausted, sweaty, her hands scraped raw from climbing. Neji signaled her towards something a little ways to the west. Another footprint. Grumbling, she started hopping from branch to branch, prepared for yet another false lead. 

It was among some slippery moss on a low hanging branch of a maple, a scuffed footprint as though someone had landed, slid, then regained their balance and carried on. It was fresh, the moss still bruised around the edges, and definitely left by a shinobi’s sandal, much larger than Tenten’s own, the tread worn down at the back of the heel. She was about to climb to the top of the tree to signal to Neji that she had a lead, to signal to Gai and Lee to join them when she felt it; a disturbance in the air behind her, a looming sense of menace. She bailed off the branch, letting herself fall all the way to the forest floor where she landed rolling so that the impact wouldn’t knock the air from her lungs. Above her head, shuriken protruded from the tree bark where she had been crouching just moments before. The bandits dropped from the tree branches around her, hemming her in.

“It’s just a little shinobi girl,” one of them crooned.

“Hey, little kunoichi,” another one taunted. “These woods aren’t safe for a little slip of a thing like you.”

“What about a slip of a thing like me?” Neji dropped from above their heads, feet first into the face of a big, ugly bandit with only one eye and canine teeth that protruded out over his scarred lower lip. He flipped around so that he was standing against Tenten’s back.

“Thanks, Neji,” she whispered.

He reached back and squeezed her wrist once then dropped into his battle stance.

“Oh ho! A second baby ninja!” A bandit cackled. “And this one’s a pretty little boy!”

“Is it really?” His friend crowed. “I thought we’d found ourselves a second girl. Look at him.”

“Well, he got the drop on old Goro there,” said yet another, nudging their unconscious comrade as he stepped forward to tighten the ring around Tenten and Neji.

“Nine of them,” Neji hissed.

“Did you signal?”

“No time,” Neji whispered.

“Fuck.”

“Indeed.” 

“Are you just going to stand there staring at us?” Tenten addressed the bandits. “Or do you want to fight?”

“We’re still trying to decide,” declared a small, wiry one with a ridiculously waxed mustache. “It might be fun, but it also might not be worth our time. What do you think?”

“Well, what do you consider fun?” Neji asked evenly. 

Even facing away from each other, Tenten could feel Neji’s thoughts in his stance. Stall, he was telling her, keep them talking. Lee and Gai will come looking sooner or later.

“What do we find fun, he asks!” Guffawed the bandit. “Hey, Hayato! What do you consider fun?” He said the last two words in a sneering imitation of Neji’s voice.

The one he called Hayato, a sunburned brute in filthy clothing that looked like they had once belonged to a rich merchant, leered at Neji. “I find pretty little ninja boys fun.”

“Hmm, I dunno, I prefer pretty ninja girls,” the mustachioed one said, grinning with rotten teeth. 

Tenten slid her foot back surreptitiously so her heel pressed against Neji’s.  _ This could be bad _ , she tried to say. He shifted his foot just a little,  _ We’ve got this, stay calm. _

“Good thing we’ve found both!” Guffawed a squat, greasy haired bandit, slapping a club into the palm of his hand.

“So what do you say?” Hayato asked his fellows. “Do we have ourselves a little fight, or just kill ‘em? I’m sure Goro won’t be happy if we don’t make this little blind brat pay for knocking him in the face. He was ugly enough already!”

“Blind?” The bandit facing Tenten repeated.

“Sure, his eyes are all white. Haven’t got no pupils or nothing,” Hayato said.

“You dumb motherfucker!” His fellow burst out. “That kid’s not blind, he’s a fucking Hyuga!”

“What’s that?” the one with the mustache wondered. “Some kind of disease? Not contagious is it?”

Tenten felt Neji go tense behind her, and knew instantly what he was planning. She inched her hand towards her scrolls.

“You brainless dickhead,” The bandit spat, drawing his sword. “If you fucking die, you’ll deserve it for being such a stupid sack of shit. Face to face with a Hyuga and making jokes about how he’s pretty! Fuck!”

“You’re right,” Neji said slowly. Tenten could hear the smirk in his voice. “I am a Hyuga. And you are all so very stupid.”

Tenten took that for the signal and dropped, tucking her head down and unfurling her scroll so that her weapons spilled into her hands. Above her, Neji turned in a circle, stepping around her still form carefully as his hands moved too fast to see, striking at chests and throats and faces. Bandits cried out and fell around him. Tenten rose at his back, kunai flying from between her fingers and then she struck at a bandit’s face with a weighted chain. Neji cried out behind her and Tenten turned, whirling a weighted chain over her head. She let it fly towards the bandit with the club, who had caught Neji’s arm and twisted it behind his back. The chain arced around him, she pulled to tighten its circle and he was forced to release Neji as the chain pinned his arms against his sides and he toppled to the ground. Tenten sprang after him, slashing at his face with her sickle as Neji turned to intercept another bandit who had regained his feet. 

Tenten whirled her chain again and looked for her next target. The one they had called Hayato had struggled upright again and was closing in on what he believed to be Neji’s blindspot. Tenten knew he could handle it, but she had weapons in her hands and all her irritation from their afternoon of searching, all her frustration and hurt from the past few weeks came bubbling to the surface. She attacked with a cry of rage, moving from Hayato once he fell, to the next bandit, stepping around Neji with perfectly trained synchronicity that only served to feed her anger, a red haze narrowing her vision.

“Enough, Tenten!” Neji grabbed her wrist and for a moment she considered wrenching out of his grip.

“Our client wants them alive, remember,” Neji reminded her, almost scolding. “Bind them.”

“Rope will have to do until Gai-sensei can get here to help you with the seals,” Tenten said, suddenly panting for breath. “You know I’m no good at it.”

Neji nodded and together they set about tying up the unconscious bandits.

Tenten stood up from tying the last knot to find Neji standing inches away, staring at her. She looked down at herself, her clothing splattered with blood, limbs shaking with the last flushes of adrenaline, and then back at him. He had not moved.

“We should signal Gai-sensei and Lee,” she said hoarsely, but her eyes had locked on Neji’s as though she were under some sort of spell, a strange genjutsu that froze all her limbs in place, immobilizing her.

Neji took a step closer, but did not reply. He continued to stare at her.

“Neji,” she whispered. It wasn’t a question, nor was it a demand. Neji remained still.

Later, Tenten could not remember clearly which one of them it was that finally moved. One moment, they were just standing there staring at each other, her own pulse thundering in her ears as blood and mud dried on their clothing, and the wind rustled in the leaves overhead. The next, they were in each other’s arms, ravenous mouths locked together. Her arms had twined themselves around Neji’s neck, and he was pushing her back up against a tree trunk, one hand gripping her hip hard enough to almost hurt, the other cupped across the back of her head. Tenten’s feet scrabbled against the slippery roots of the tree, her pulse ratcheted up so high that her chest hurt, she couldn’t breathe, as she struggled to pull Neji as close to her as possible. Slowly but surely, that desperate, needy clash of bodies and lips resolved itself into something that more closely resembled the tenderness and longing Tenten remembered from the moonlit balcony so many weeks ago, and Neji was whispering her own name against her lips and pulling her away from the tree to wrap his arms around her and cradle her against his chest as he kissed her over and over again.

“Neji! Tenten! Where are you?” Lee’s shout startled them away from each other, so that when Lee and Gai broke through the undergrowth, they found Neji and Tenten several feet apart among the trussed up forms of the fallen bandits, breathing heavily. Tenten was barely standing, gripping her own knees for support. Neji leaned against a tree trunk with his hand pressed over his mouth. 

“Aha!” Gai shouted. “Looks like you two decided to do all the work yourselves after all.”

“They didn’t leave us much choice,” Tenten panted.

“Happens to the best of us,” Gai said, clapping Neji on the shoulder so hard that his knees nearly buckled. “Now help me seal them so we can get them back to our client.”

Tenten flopped down under a tree and pulled out her water bottle as Neji and Gai went through the motions of sealing the captives.

“Are you okay, Tenten?” Lee asked, sitting down beside her. He looked more than a little disappointed at having missed out on the fight.

“I’m fine, Lee,” she muttered, her eyes not leaving Neji.

“Are you sure?” He pressed. “Because you have these red spots on your cheekbones, and your mouth does not look quite right. Did you get punched?”

Tenten barked out a laugh at that, and Lee leaned forward to peer into her face more closely.

“It happened again?” he whispered, jerking his head towards Neji.

“Shut up, Lee,” Tenten hissed.

“Please be careful,” Lee breathed, and Tenten suddenly realized how unsettling this must be for him. Tenten and Neji weren’t just friends or teammates to him, they were siblings, the family he had never had. For all her exasperation with his antics, she felt the same way about him and knew Neji did too. If something were to happen that drove a wedge into their long standing team dynamic, something powerful enough to ruin their bonds, make their relationships awkward, it would break Lee’s heart. Her’s too, if she was being honest with herself.

She reached out and squeezed Lee’s shoulder. “Of course.”

On the long walk back to the town that had hired them, Tenten lagged behind the rest of the team, waiting. Before long, Neji fell back to walk alongside her, his eyes flicking sideways to meet hers.

“Neji. . .” she whispered.

His mouth flattened into a hard line, he made the tiniest shake of his head.  _ Forget about it. _

Tenten took a deep breath, then looked ahead to where Lee walked next to Gai-sensei, excitedly planning all the training they could get in on their way home from this mission.

She turned back to Neji and nodded once, decisively.  _ Agreed.  _

What did it matter, she thought to herself as they continued walking, if she was so in love with Neji that she could barely contain it? What did it matter that he had kissed her like  _ that  _ in the middle of a battlefield, that she had been able to feel his relief that she was alright, his heart racing with adrenaline as he pressed her against that tree, feeling exactly the same way she did? None of it could matter, because the team was the most important thing; the team had to come first. Just like Lee, this was the only family that Tenten had ever known, and she would do anything to protect it. 

If Neji needed to pretend that he had never kissed her, that neither of them had this sort of feelings for the other, if that was what it took to protect the team, she could do it. If she could forget those first kisses, she could forget this one too, couldn’t she?

* * * * *

Another mission, another adrenaline rush. And Neji’s arms were locked around her, as he kissed her until she had gone so long without drawing a breath that the world spun and her knees went weak. Another mission, another near miss. And she had both fists clenched in that glorious spring rain scented hair as her tongue skated over the roof of Neji’s mouth. Another mission, another thrill of victory. And they were tangled together in a mess of arms and legs and  _ want  _ on the forest floor. 

Another little shake of Neji’s head, another tiny crease between his eyebrows that said,  _ forget about it, this never happened.  _ Another minute nod from Tenten that agreed,  _ We need to put the team first, we can’t let this affect Lee or Gai-sensei. _

Tenten liked to think that they would have been fine that way, she liked to think that maybe she wasn’t in love with her teammate, that it was just a coping mechanism, a natural reaction to surviving another high stakes mission side by side. Except that, as the months went by, the adrenaline rush of the mission which acted as the trigger, became the dopamine high that followed a good sparring match, then the satisfaction of completing a minor mission before sun down, and finally the late night hush of darkened streets walking home together from Lee’s place on a Friday night.

Every time her team headed for the mission desk or was called to the Hokage’s office, Tenten found herself silently praying for the most daring, dangerous mission possible; anything that would make it easier for her to shrug off what would inevitably happen later. Between missions and on days off, all Tenten could think about was Neji. She couldn’t sleep through the whole night, her dreams too full of bottomless river pearl eyes and that beautiful mouth. She could scarcely eat for the butterflies in her stomach whenever she thought of him. And she knew it wasn’t just her either; every training session, every stroll through the village, every team lunch, she could feel Neji’s eyes following her every motion.

_ Don’t think about it,  _ she told herself, late at night when she had once again woken up sweaty and breathing hard,  _ It never happened. _

_ Don’t let him get to you like this,  _ she reprimanded herself as she struggled to focus on supervising a class of academy students practicing with kunai.  _ It’s just kissing. He doesn’t feel that way for you. _

_ It’s this or nothing,  _ she reminded herself the next time it became difficult to give him that little nod agreeing not to talk about it,  _ and it’s just not that big a deal. _

_ I am a strong, courageous kunoichi,  _ she repeated to herself when Neji’s leg brushed up against hers beneath the table at the dumpling shop.  _ I won’t fall to pieces over a few kisses. . . no matter how amazing they were. _

_ Who am I kidding?  _ She finally asked herself as she realized for the third time that day that she had taken a wrong turn through the village.  _ I’m in big trouble. _

A tapping caught her attention and she looked up to see Ino waving to her from the window of the flower shop. Her friend beckoned and then disappeared back into the foliage behind the glass. Tenten opened the shop door, the bells overhead chiming merrily, and stepped into the fragrant humidity inside the shop.

“Ino?” she called. It was just past closing time and the shop was empty and darkened. 

“Back here!” Ino’s voice sang out from behind a display overflowing with gardenias and yellow tulips. “The other girls are in the back room. Go on through!”

Tenten heard the front door of the shop lock as she slipped behind the counter and Ino followed her into the back room where the last rays of the setting sun lanced through the glass roof and Sakura and Hinata sat on old cushions on the concrete floor.

“So what are we doing tonight?” Tenten asked them, folding herself onto a cushion.

“We are going to have a little talk,” Ino announced, sitting beside her. Tenten had a sudden feeling that she had walked right into a trap.

“We’re worried about you Tenten,” Sakura declared.

“Neji doesn’t seem quite right either,” Hinata told her. Tenten stared at her, stricken. Somehow, through all this, it had not occurred to her that Hinata lived with Neji, trained with him almost as much as she did, maybe even served as his confidant.

She collected her thoughts and crossed her arms over her chest. “Not a chance! The last time I told you girls anything about Neji, Shikamaru found out, and look what happened!”

“I already told you I’m sorry about that,” Ino cried. “I was just venting a bit and normally Shikamaru doesn’t listen or care enough to be a problem! I promise I’ll never tell him anything again.”

“Wait,” Sakura cut in. “You mean to tell me that you’re acting all weird because of that silly truth or dare game? That was months ago!”

“I’m not acting funny!” Tenten protested. It rang hollow even in her own ears.

“Tenten,” Sakura reached over to place a bracing hand on her shoulder. “Not an hour ago, I saw you walk face first into a pole.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“No, Tenten,” Sakura sighed. “I was right across the street. You didn’t see me there?”

“You can talk to us,” Hinata promised, reaching out to take her hand. “We care about you.”

“Okay fine,” Tenten grumbled. “So, it did all start with that stupid game, but that’s not even the half of it. Not anymore.”

She told them about the second kiss on the balcony after everyone had fallen asleep. That horrible practice session where she had accidentally stabbed Neji in the knee and their conversation afterwards, the agreement to forget about it. Three wide pairs of eyes hung on her every word as she told them about what had happened after fighting the bandits and every mission after that, the secretive kisses that had spilled over into their regular life in the village as well, which she was finding more and more difficult to justify as an adrenaline fuelled coping mechanism.

When she finally stopped talking, she felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her chest, as though she could breathe properly for the first time in months.

“Why in the hell would you agree to pretend it never happened?” Ino demanded.

“Because, he obviously doesn’t feel that way about me, and I don’t know, things could get messy and tear the team apart,” Tenten explained, suddenly realizing how absurd that sounded.

“Doesn’t feel that way about you?” Sakura repeated, disbelievingly.

Hinata shook her head. “Of course he does. At least I think he does. He’s a mess.”

“A mess?” Tenten asked, all her attention suddenly fixed on Hinata.

“He hardly eats, he wanders the compound in the middle of the night, he forgets things.” Hinata explained. “Last week he snapped at Father over a tiny training mishap and he’s been staying at Lee’s ever since.”

Tenten had known Neji was staying at Lee’s place recently, but hadn’t heard that he’d had words with Lord Hiashi. She blinked at Hinata in bewilderment.

“He’s been getting worse for a while, some of the family elders thought he was sick,” Hinata confided. “Father said it was just teenage rebellion.”

“Your father doesn’t know the first goddamn thing about Neji,” Tenten snarled. She immediately regretted having taken such a tone with Hinata but her friend merely smiled and shook her head.

“I know he doesn’t. There are lots of things Father doesn’t know.”

“Such as?” Ino prompted impatiently.

“Neji talks to me sometimes,” Hinata explained slowly. “He knows I can keep a secret so if we’re away from home, he’ll tell me what’s on his mind.”

“ _ And?” _ Ino practically screamed.

“I shouldn’t say,” Hinata whispered. “He wouldn’t want me to.”

“Hinata!” Sakura scolded. “You can’t admit to knowing something in front of Tenten and then refuse to say anything else! Look at the poor girl! She’s falling apart in front of our eyes.”

“I am not!” Tenten protested.

“Last week, I saw you mix up your eyeliner pencil and a senbon,” Sakura pointed out. “You were lucky not to poke your eye out!”

“Why are you so observant?” Tenten groaned, dropping her face into her hands.

“I used to have to deal with Naruto everyday,” Sakura reminded her. “He was a danger to himself if not constantly supervised. You learn to notice anything that’s a little bit off.”

“How is he, anyway?” Hinata asked.

“I still haven’t heard anything,” Sakura said, shoulders slumping forward, eyebrows drawing down in worry. 

“Naruto’s fine!” Ino protested impatiently. “There’s no one tougher than that idiot. Now, let’s get back to Tenten’s problems. Out with it, Hinata! Quit stalling!”

“Well, you see,” Hinata whispered. The other three girls leaned closer so they could hear her. “Neji told me that he had some . . . feelings for Tenten and he doesn’t know what to do about it because of how things are with the clan, you know.”

“He had said something like that,” Tenten recalled.

“He got very angry when I told him that he can’t let the clan make his decisions for him,” Hinata said sadly. “I guess coming from a member of the head family, that’s bad advice.”

Tenten snorted. “Yeah, I can see why he took that badly.”

“I didn’t mean it that way!” Hinata protested. “But considering that his mother ran away to avoid being Marked, I can see why he would be. . . scared to have those kinds of feelings for someone.”

“Oh.” Tenten whispered. “ _ Oh. _ ”

Her brain was awhirl with Hinata’s words, the implications like a series of slaps across the face. 

“I don’t know how to fix this,” she said finally.

“Maybe just, tell him how you actually feel?” Sakura suggested.

Tenten shuddered. “You didn’t see the look on his face the last time we talked about it. The only time we talked about it. He’s never looked at me like that before, like I was a stranger. Or an enemy. He told me outright that it meant nothing.”

“He lied,” Hinata said gently. “And now you know why.”

“But he’ll just lie again,” Tenten said wildly. “And he’ll tell me to forget all about it. He. . . he won’t want to do it anymore.”

“Tenten,” Ino said sharply. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“No, she’s right,” Sakura said before Tenten could say anything. “You two think it’s a secret, but it’s obvious to everyone that something is going on, and if you don’t clear the air soon, the tension between the two of you really will cause problems for your team. If you’re so distracted that you’re slipping up on simple tasks like walking down the street or fixing your makeup, how long will it be before you slip up on something more important?”

“Exactly,” Ino agreed, voice subdued. “You’re worried about risking your team’s dynamic, but your relationships will recover from a little awkwardness. This kind of thing isn’t exactly rare on a team like that, remember. But you’re at real risk of getting someone killed, or seriously hurt, if you carry on like this.”

“You’re right,” Tenten pressed her knuckles over her mouth hard so she wouldn’t cry. “Oh god, you’re right.”

“The worst that could happen is he’d reject you, and things would be a little awkward for a while until you can move on,” Sakura said gently. Hinata patted her comfortingly on the back.

“Yeah, take it from Sakura,” Ino said, grinning suddenly. “She has lots of experience being hopelessly in love with a teammate who wouldn’t look twice at her.” She shrieked and rolled backwards as Sakura’s fist whistled through the space where her head had been just moments before. 

Tenten wrapped her arms tightly around herself and fought down a wave of nausea. Hinata edged a little closer, ever sympathetic. 

_ They’re right,  _ Tenten told herself emphatically.  _ And if Hinata can live with everyone in the village knowing she’s in love with Naruto who barely knows she exists, and Sakura could confess to someone as cold as Sasuke, surely I am strong enough to talk to Neji. I can do this. _

* * * * *

“Neji, we’ve got to talk,” Tenten gasped, struggling to remember how to draw air into her lungs.

“Why?” Neji took a step back, his face suddenly wary.

The air that rushed between them felt horribly cold to Tenten and she was nearly overwhelmed by the urge to fling herself forward, to close that space between them before it could widen permanently and just go on kissing Neji. She forced herself to think of Lee and Gai and the conversation in the backroom of the flower shop.

“Because we can’t carry on this way,” Tenten forced herself to say. “Someone is going to get hurt.”

“How would someone get hurt?” Neji asked. Tenten knew him well enough to know that he was being deliberately obtuse. 

“We’re both distracted and acting strangely, it could make the difference between life and death on a mission, for Gai-sensei and Lee, as well as us.”

Neji bit his lip, and Tenten knew he had thought of this as well.

“And,” Tenten made herself keep talking. “It’s like you said, you’re my best friend, and that means everything to me, but if we don’t talk about this, then our friendship is going to get all messed up.”

Neji hung his head. 

“I knew this was going to happen,” he whispered.

“Neji,” Tenten forged on. “I know you said before that it all meant nothing, but I need you to know that I . . . have feelings for you.”

She grimaced, chickening out at the last minute. She told herself it was a close enough approximation of the truth and he knew her well enough that he could probably see what she wasn’t saying written all over her face anyway.

“You can’t,” Neji said flatly, taking another step backwards, dead leaves crunching under his sandals.

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t have feelings for me, Tenten.”

“Neji, that’s kind of a ridiculous thing to say, and -”

“You have to listen to me.” Neji stepped close again, grabbing her upper arms in a vice grip and staring hard into her eyes. “I am a member of the branch family of the Hyuga clan, a caged bird by birth. The last thing I ever want for you, Tenten, is a cage. You were meant to be free and happy, and I can only give you the opposite of those things.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tenten protested. “I’m not asking you to make any sort of commitment, and I’m certainly not asking you to make me part of your clan.”

“Then what are you asking for?”

“I’m asking you to be my boyfriend.” Tenten’s heart was hammering so hard that the words sounded muffled in her own ears. “Let’s at least try to do this properly.”

“I can’t do that,” Neji whispered. Her arms were going numb under his grip.

“Then at least acknowledge the truth of your feelings!” Tenten insisted, anger spiking hot and poisonous in her gut. “Surely you can give me that much!”

Neji’s eyes stared straight through her forehead, flat and dead. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You’re a terrible fucking liar,” Tenten snarled, wrenching herself out of his grasp.

“What difference does it make?” Neji demanded, his voice rising slightly. “If I feel what you feel or don’t, why does it even matter?”

Tenten laughed sharply. “How could it  _ not  _ matter?”

“Because, even if I did feel that way,” Neji was very close to shouting now. “Which, I  _ don’t _ , nothing could come from it anyway!”

He reached up and yanked his headband loose, tore the bandages away from his forehead and stepped forward so that Tenten was cornered between his angry face and the smooth bark of an old beech tree.

“Take a good look at it, Tenten,” he snarled. He grabbed her wrist and pressed her fingers to his forehead so she could feel how the bright green lines of the brand stood out from the smooth skin of his face in raised lines. Tenten snatched her hand back, shaking.

“Remember it,” Neji said bitterly. “And don’t forget again. My life is not my own, and I have nothing I can offer you. Put your feelings for me aside.”

“It’s not that easy.” Tears were starting to gather in the corners of Tenten’s eyes.

“I do it all the time,” Neji said evenly. He was lying again, to himself as much as to her, but somehow knowing that didn’t make her feel any better.

“I guess it’s hard for you to understand,” Neji sighed. “Not having a clan, not having to live your life beholden to anyone else.”

Tenten knew he was trying to extend an olive branch, that in his own way he was attempting to bring their argument to an end, to allow them to move forward. But she was too angry and hurt to back down now.

“Yeah, Neji, you’re right,” she snarled. “It’s so easy being a foundling child, no clan, no parents, no family of any sort. Being totally alone in the world is the best!”

“Tenten!” Neji reached out to her again, his eyes wide with shock.

“No!” She turned on her heel and ran, half blinded by tears. Neji didn’t follow.

She ran without even thinking until she found herself in a back alley off the village’s main street, and a glass walled room came into view. She threw open the old wooden door and let herself into the back room of the flower shop. She wedged herself between a pot of willow branches and a row of carnation plants heavy with yellow buds, and curled herself into a ball.

Tenten hated crying. She saw it as a completely pointless activity and was always irritated and impatient with Lee and Gai and their endless tears of sorrow, or triumph, or joy, or whatever else they were feeling. She scrubbed angrily at her eyes with her sleeve, not caring that she left a smear of mascara across the white fabric. She saw Ino’s blond head bob around the doorframe from the front of the shop and within a few minutes, Sakura appeared in the backroom and shut the door.

She sighed as she sat down on the floor across from Tenten. 

“Great fucking advice, guys,” Tenten said. It was a weak attempt at aggression and Sakura pretended she didn’t hear it.

“Are you okay?” she asked gently. 

Tenten shook her head, feeling horribly melodramatic and more than a little bit stupid, but she allowed Sakura to put her arm around her anyway. 

“I know it hurts a lot,” Sakura said. 

That was it. She didn’t offer Tenten any empty words of comfort, no promises that it would get better, no assurances that she was too good for him anyway or that she would find someone better. Tenten appreciated that most of all.

* * * * *

It was well past three o’clock in the morning and Tenten was still staring at a water stain on the ceiling of her apartment when someone started throwing pebbles at her window frame. 

She considered ignoring it. If it were Lee, he would have climbed onto the balcony and let himself in. Any of her other friends would have knocked at the front door like a regular person. There was only one person who would choose such a roundabout way of requesting her attention and she knew that if he was doing that, he already knew she was awake anyway. 

She rolled out of bed and shuffled out onto the balcony in her pajamas.

“What do you want, Neji?”

“I just want to talk to you, Tenten, please.” In the moonlight, Neji nearly glowed. It was hard to be properly angry at someone so beautiful.

“We’ve already talked,” Tenten hissed, trying not to wake her neighbours.

“Tenten.” To her surprise Neji climbed the side of the building until he was perched on the balcony railing. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about earlier.”

“Yeah,” she said heavily. “I’m sorry, too.”

“I really couldn’t live with myself if I did something to hurt our friendship,” Neji whispered. It was a double edged sentiment, Tenten realized. He was telling her  _ you are important to me,  _ at the same time he was saying  _ but we can’t be anything more than this. _

“I know,” she said. “We’re fine.” She wasn’t sure that they actually were fine, just that she desperately needed them to be.

“You were right though,” Neji finally whispered. “Someone was going to get hurt.”

Tenten chuckled bitterly. “Someone already did.”

Neji flinched. Then he shook his head and said. “We can’t do that again.”

“Agreed,” Tenten whispered, though her throat felt so tight she was surprised she could speak.

Neji held out his hand and she shook it, pretending that his touch didn’t burn her skin, that she didn’t want to grab his hand and haul him over the railing, pull him into the apartment. No, she was stronger than that. 

When their next mission proved to be one of their most dangerous yet - tangling with the Akatsuki, fighting untiring clones of themselves, nearly losing more than one dear friend - Tenten wondered if their resolve would hold. She promised herself that if it didn’t, she wouldn’t be the one to make the first move. Safe again inside the walls of Suna, with Lee off fussing over poor Gaara, Tenten found herself alone with Neji in the narrow, shaded alley that ran alongside their inn. When Neji stepped towards her, her heart back flipped into her throat. Without saying a word, Neji put his arms around her and gathered her into a tight embrace, leaning the side of his head against her temple. 

“I’m glad you’re alright, Tenten,” he whispered.

“I’m glad you are, too,” she replied.

He let her go and walked away.


	3. Something To Offer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warning** : Descriptions of violence, blood and injury. A character is drugged. Mentions of stalking.

“Lee! NO!” Tenten threw her arms up in front of her face in time to absorb the worst of the impact from the kick but it still threw her halfway across the training field.

“Tenten! I am sorry!” Lee sprinted towards her and helped her back to her feet. “I thought you were ready!”

“Apparently not,” Tenten grumbled, brushing grass off her pants. 

“You really need to be more careful, Lee,” Neji scolded, hurrying over to join them. “You could have hurt her.”

“I’m not made of glass, Neji,” Tenten snapped.

“I am sorry,” Lee said again, looking back and forth between his teammates in confusion. “I got carried away. I always forget that you two do not like to train as hard as Gai-sensei and I do!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Tenten clapped him on the shoulder. “Can we work on weapons now?”

“Fine,” Lee agreed, pulling his nunchaku out of his leg warmer and settling it under his arm.

“Here, Tenten.” Neji had retrieved her jo from her bundle of practice weapons at the edge of the training field and held it out for her.

“Thanks.”

His hand brushed against hers as he released his grip on the staff. She met his eyes questioningly and he looked away, the faintest bit of colour rising in his cheeks. Just like that, Tenten’s heart was doing backflips.

“Tenten!” Lee shouted. “Hurry up!”

She rushed away from Neji and charged straight at Lee, already swinging the jo in a lethal arc around her head. 

“Hey,” Lee whispered (or at least what passed for whispering with Lee), as he blocked the blunt end of the staff with the chain of his weapon. “What is wrong with you two?”

“Nothing,” Tenten said, jabbing at his kneecap.

“But you are both acting so strange,” Lee protested, dodging neatly out of the way and swinging at her elbow.   
“No, he’s acting strange,” Tenten hissed. “I am being completely normal!”

She brought the end of the staff around swiftly and nearly succeeded in knocking the nunchaku back into Lee’s own face.

“Is it because of that big fight you had a few months ago?”

“How did you even know about that?” She aimed a series of quick jabs at his belly but was blocked each time.

“Neji told me about it,” Lee confessed. “He was very upset.”

“Good,” Tenten said savagely, as she was forced to roll backwards to avoid a blow to the head.

“Sakura said you were upset too.” Lee leapt after her and she brought the staff up to catch him. He landed in the centre of it and backflipped away as Tenten sprang to her feet again.

“You’re turning into quite a gossip, Lee,” Tenten teased, jabbing towards his throat. Lee grabbed the end of the staff and pulled Tenten forwards, swinging the nunchaku down towards her face.

“I like to know what is happening with my team,” he said as Tenten dodged aside at the last minute. “I do not like it when we fight.”

“Well we won’t fight anymore,” Tenten told him, knocking his wrist aside so she could get in a kick. Lee backflipped away again, releasing his grip on the jo.

“So you worked it out then?” Lee beamed at her and came in for a kick. The spinning staff pushed him back.

“We agreed to forget the whole thing.”

“Oh,” Lee frowned and parried several more blows from the staff. “It does not look that way.”

“What-” The whirling end of the nunchaku caught Tenten beneath the chin and her head snapped back, her vision going momentarily white with pain. She crumpled to the ground.

“Oh no!” Lee shouted. “Tenten! You could have blocked that!”

“Dammit, Lee!” Neji stormed over from the bench at the edge of the training field. “Let me look at that, Tenten.”

Neji knelt beside her and caressed her jaw with cool fingers. “Well, it’s not broken.”

Tenten wanted to close her eyes and lean into his touch, to savour it. So instead, she swatted his hands away angrily. 

“Of course it’s not broken.”

“You worry too much, Neji,” Lee told him. “Tenten is very strong!”

“I know.” Neji backed away from them both. “Of course she is. I have to go.”’

He left the training field at a brisk walk, disappearing into the trees without looking back.

“That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about,” Lee said. He bent down to help Tenten to her feet. 

“Come on, Lee.” Tenten suddenly felt exhausted. “You can buy me lunch to make up for hitting me in the face.”

Lee followed her cheerfully to a noodle shop, clearly feeling at least a little guilty about having knocked her down twice in one training session as he carried her bundle of weapons for her and did not even try to talk her into choosing curry. 

They had barely sat down when Sakura and Ino squeezed into the booth with them, grinning like a pair of wild dogs on the trail of a rabbit.

“We just saw Neji,” Sakura whispered.

“What did you do to him?” Ino asked.

“Nothing?” 

“I am afraid I made him angry,” Lee piped up, far too loudly. “We were training and I hurt Tenten by mistake.”

“So?” Ino demanded. “Stuff like that happens in training all the time.”

“I know,” Lee agreed, flexing his bandaged hands on the tabletop. “But Neji has been acting very strange towards Tenten these last few months.”

“Is something, you know, going on there?” Sakura demanded.

“No, nothing like that,” Tenten said, and knew she sounded bitter.

“Why not?” Ino asked.

“I told you. That’s ancient history. Forget it,” Tenten snapped.

“Hmmm, so sad. You’re still not over him,” Ino sighed.

“Can you blame her?” Sakura put in.

“Neji’s no Sasuke,” Ino sniffed.

“Excuse you,” Lee half-shouted. “Neji is one of the most handsome young men in this entire village. He is very attractive! Much better looking than Sasuke!”

Three pairs of bewildered eyes swivelled to stare at him. 

“Yes, Lee, we know.” Tenten patted his arm and shook her head.

Ino waved one hand dismissively. “Neji’s just Hinata with more muscles and a bad attitude.”

Lee opened his mouth to defend his friend again, but Ino cut him off.

“What you need,” She declared, pointing one finger right between Tenten’s eyes. “Is to get him out of your system. Go out with someone else, have a good time, remember that there are other men in this village.”

“You think that would work?” Tenten frowned at her.

“It could not hurt,” Lee mused. 

“I’m not dating Lee,” Tenten said quickly. Lee shook his head violently, looking scandalized at the very idea.

“Goodness, no!” Ino shuddered visibly. “I’d offer you my teammates but. . .”

“Not a chance,” Tenten scoffed.

“Please don’t consider mine, either,” Sakura added grimly.

“What is wrong with Naruto and Sai?” Lee asked.

“Everything.”

“Oh, I’ve got it!” Ino snapped her fingers. “There’s this guy who comes by the shop every Saturday afternoon to buy flowers for his grandmother.”

Lee nodded enthusiastically at that.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sakura demanded.

“Nothing at all!” Ino made a show of being offended. “I kind of had my eye on him myself, but I’ll make a sacrifice for a friend just this once.”

“What’s he like?” Sakura pressed.

“He’s a couple years older than us, a chunin.” 

“But what does he look like? Tenten needs more to go on than ‘older chunin.’” 

“Oh, you know, tall, dreamy, looks good in a uniform.” Ino shrugged. “So what do you think, Tenten? Want me to try to set you up?”

Tenten exhaled heavily and looked down at her plate. It was difficult to imagine being interested in someone who wasn’t Neji, but maybe her friends were right and that was exactly why she needed to date someone else. Maybe if she spent an evening out with a charming man who wasn’t throwing her mixed signals and bouncing between hot and cold so fast it made her head spin, she’d forget about him entirely.

“Alright, thanks,” she said finally.

“Great!” Ino enthused. “Be prepared for Friday night!” 

“What makes you think he’ll agree?” Tenten asked.

“The man spends every Saturday afternoon with his grandmother,” Ino snorted. “Trust me, he needs a date.”

Sakura pretended to cringe behind Ino’s back. 

“Watch out,” She stage-whispered to Tenten across the table. “He’s probably got warts, or missing teeth, or something.”

“I’m telling you, he does not!” Ino shrieked, swatting at Sakura with the back of her hand.

As it turned out, Sakura could not have been more wrong. The young man who Ino ushered into Tenten’s apartment on Friday night was every bit as handsome as she’d promised, with kind eyes and an easy smile that made him instantly likeable.

“Shion, this is my friend Tenten,” Ino said by way of introduction. “Tenten, this is Shion.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.” Tenten felt suddenly nervous.

“Likewise,” Shion agreed, a smile lighting up his eyes as he bent to kiss her hand.

Ino squeaked excitedly and went to join Sakura who was sitting on the kitchen counter.

“These are for you,” Shion told her, producing as if by some magic trick, a cheerful bouquet of yellow and orange gerberas mingled with baby’s breath. 

“Thank you.” Tenten accepted the flowers awkwardly. “I um, don’t think I own a vase.”

“I’ll look after it.” Ino held out her hand and snapped her fingers until Tenten gave her the flowers. “You two run along now.”

“Shall we?” Shion gallantly offered her his elbow, and she took it, feeling more and more unsure of herself, and let him lead her out of the apartment.

He led her to one of the village’s more casual sushi bars, where an assortment of other young shinobi couples populated the brightly coloured plastic tables, and pop music played over the speakers set in the ceiling.

“Is this okay?” he asked. “I didn’t want you to feel pressured by a fancy place since we’ve, you know, never actually met each other.”

“Yeah, this is great.” Tenten took her seat and looked over the menu.

“Great!” Shion echoed, flashing her a relieved grin and pushing his hair out of his eyes. Tenten wondered idly what he would look like with long hair.

“You look really nice, by the way,” he said. “Like, when Ino asked me if I would go out with her friend, she said you were cute, but I think she might have understated it a little.”

Tenten snorted. “When Ino asked you to go out with her friend, you probably thought I was too ugly to get a date without her help.

Shion winked at her. “You probably thought the same about me.”

“When Ino suggested this, Sakura immediately asked what was wrong with you,” Tenten admitted. “I might have been a bit suspicious.”

“I suppose Ino told you about my ex-girlfriend then?” Shion said, looking suddenly downcast.

“She didn’t.” Tenten made a mental note to have a word with Ino later.

“Oh, well,” Shion grimaced. “I’ve been kind of down for a few months because I was in what I thought was a great relationship until she got an offer to join ANBU and told me I would only weigh her down.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”   
“Don’t worry,” he said, smiling again. “I don’t want to talk about that tonight anyway.”

“Sure. If it’s any consolation, Ino suggested that I go out with you because I wasn’t quite feeling like myself either.”

“Great!” Shion exclaimed. “We can do our best to cheer each other up!”

Tenten smiled back at him. He had a very expressive face and dark, lively eyes that reminded her just a little too much of Lee. 

Shion turned out to be a very engaging dinner companion. He was full of stories about missions in far away places, his two cats, and his grandmother who was a retired shinobi herself.

“So do you come from a shinobi clan then?” Tenten asked.

“Yeah, but we’re not a particularly distinguished one,” Shion admitted, laughing and rolling his eyes. “Definitely not Hyugas or anything like that, not even like, Inuzuka level. Say, you’re on a team with one of the Hyuga kids, right?”

“Yep,” Tenten said, bristling slightly at hearing Neji referred to as a kid. “Neji Hyuga and Rock Lee.”

“Rock Lee,” Shion repeated and let out a low whistle. “Now there’s a legend of a shinobi. Hey, is it true that he beat up the Kazekage in the chunin exams a few years ago?”

“Came close anyway.” Tenten nodded. “They’re pretty much best friends now though.”

“Weird! How did that happen?” He seemed genuinely interested and Tenten was glad to steer the conversation away from Neji, so she retold the story.

By the time Shion offered to walk her home, they had both eaten a ridiculous amount and ordered far too many pots of tea to allow them to sit and continue talking. Shion had seemed to know all the right questions to ask to keep her talking about weapons, Gai’s weird antics, and her idea of a perfect weekend (being allowed to sleep in and have some peace and quiet for once).

On the way home, Shion offered her his elbow again. She played along, but it felt formal and old fashioned to her. Shouldn’t he hold her hand? Then again, what did she know? It wasn’t as though Neji would ever hold her hand. 

At the entrance to her building, Shion stopped and grinned at her.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Tenten. Thank you for coming out with me.”

“I had a nice time, too,” Tenten said, making sure to smile back. Wasn’t this the part of the evening where she was supposed to have butterflies in her stomach and weak knees? She felt . . . nothing.

Shion’s face suddenly became serious. “Tenten, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to kiss you goodnight.”

Why not, Tenten thought. Even if she didn’t feel the way she thought she was supposed to, maybe it was just because they had been too formal with each other. Maybe a kiss would break whatever hold Neji had over her, set her free again, as though she were an enchanted frog in a fairy tale. So she nodded and stepped forward. Shion took both of her hands in his and leaned forward to kiss her, softly, politely, yet with a sincerity and skill that Tenten was sure would have taken any other girl’s breath away. To her it just felt nice; warm lips against hers that could have belonged to anybody and meant nothing. As Shion pulled away from her, smiling, she knew only one thing for certain. Neji had lied to her when he said he didn’t feel the same way she did. Unless he was a liar through to the very core of his being, there was no way he could have kissed her the way that he had if it hadn’t meant something. 

“Goodnight, Tenten.” Shion squeezed her hands and let go, turning to stroll away down the street. He turned back once to wave over his shoulder. Tenten responded absently and her eyes caught on the scene across the street from her. Two people, still as statues, white eyes shimmering ghostly in the light of the streetlamp. Hinata stood with her hands fretfully pressed to her face, eyes flickering back and forth between Tenten and her cousin. Neji had dropped a shopping bag on the ground and did not seem to notice its contents rolling across the cobbles at his feet. He stood stock still, his eyes fixed on Tenten.

For one insane moment, she wanted to march across the street and confront him. To tell him that he was a liar, to demand he confess. Instead she turned on her heel and fled inside.

She unlocked her door and slammed it shut behind her, flipping the lock and leaning against it, chanting, “Shit, shit, shit, shit. . .”

“What happened? What did he do? Ino, what sort of creep did you set her up with?” Sakura shouted, leaping off the couch immediately.

“Neji’s outside!” Tenten hissed.

“Dammit, Tenten!” Ino cried. “The whole point of setting you up with Shion is so that you would stop thinking about Neji!”

“Yeah, well, fat chance of that now,” Tenten grumbled, stomping across the room to fling herself onto the couch between her friends. “Shion kissed me goodnight and I didn’t realize Neji and Hinata were right across the street. He saw the whole thing!”

“Yeah, so?” Ino demanded.

“This is bad!” Tenten all but shouted.

“Okay, calm down,” Sakura told them both. “Back up. You said he kissed you good night. Does that mean the date went well.”

“Yeah, fine,” Tenten shrugged.

“And the kiss?” Ino demanded. “How was that?”

“Nothing special, really, if we’re being honest,” Tenten admitted.

“Do you mean that he was a bad kisser, or you were comparing him to Neji?” Sakura asked shrewdly. 

“The second one.” Tenten grabbed one of her throw pillows and hugged it against her chest.

“Dammit, Tenten,” Ino said again.

“I can’t help it!” Tenten cried. “I tried to like him, I really did. But the whole night I kept thinking that he would look better if his hair was longer or about how he talks too loud, or even just that I would have prefered to be spending time with Neji instead of him. And then he kissed me and all I could think about was Neji. And as I mentioned,  _ he was there and he saw the whole thing! _ ”

“Are you worried he’ll be angry?” Sakura asked slowly.

“Why would he be angry?” Tenten growled. “He’s the one who rejected me.”

“Ahh.” Sakura nodded. “You’re worried that he’ll think you have moved on and he’ll be relieved.”

Tenten glared at her. “Why do you need to be so perceptive all the time?”

“So how did he react?” Ino wondered.

“He was just kind of standing there,” Tenten told them, hugging the pillow tighter. “Like he was in shock or something.”

“Typical,” Ino scoffed. “Turns you down and then has the nerve to act surprised when you move on to someone else!”

Secretly, Tenten doubted that was it, but she didn’t know how to tell her friends about her revelation. Or perhaps, it wasn’t so much that she didn’t know how to tell them, as that she worried that they would tell her that it was all just wishful thinking, another sign that she needed to let Neji go.

* * * * *

She was awakened on Saturday morning, not by her alarm clock but by Lee. He slammed through the front door of the apartment and immediately threw himself flat on the floor to avoid the barrage of shuriken. 

“Can you just learn to knock, Lee?” Tenten groaned, flinging herself back down on her bed. “I’m tired of having to patch up the drywall all the time.”

“Sorry!” Lee shouted. “But Tsunade needs us right away! She has a mission for us.” 

Ino and Sakura’s heads popped up over the back of the couch, disheveled and groggy.

“What kind of mission?” Ino wondered, rubbing her eyes.

Lee nearly jumped a foot in the air, but managed to answer evenly. “I have not heard yet. Neji just came running a few minutes ago to let me know.”

“And how is Neji?” Sakura asked with feigned innocence.

“He looks like he has not slept all night!” Lee cried. “This must be serious!”

“Alright,” Tenten rolled back out of bed. “Give me two minutes to get dressed and I’ll catch up with you at the tower.”

“Right!” Lee flew back out the door. 

Tenten sighed and began gathering up her battle clothes and her scrolls. “Well, this will be awkward.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Sakura wondered.   
“Yeah,” Tenten said decisively. “I’ll be fine. We’re both professionals, remember.”

“Okay good,” Ino said. Her face disappeared from view as she flopped back down on the couch. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Lock up when you leave,” Tenten reminded her friends as she sped out the door and ran for the Hokage’s tower.

Within half an hour, she was running out of the village with Lee and Neji. Gai was away on another mission so Neji had been declared leader. The briefing was simple enough, but gave Tenten an uneasy feeling. A councilman in a nearby town had complained that someone was stalking his daughter and had requested shinobi to help apprehend the culprit and put an end to it. 

By lunchtime they were seated around a low table, sipping tea with their client and listening to the young woman retell the full story of the prowler and the trouble he was causing them.

“And I’m scared to go anywhere alone now,” she wailed, edging slightly closer to Neji. “He could be anywhere, he could be anyone. I don’t know who to trust!”

“That is terrible!” Lee exclaimed, slamming one fist down on the table so hard that the dishes rattled. The girl’s father nodded in agreement, but she didn’t so much as look at Lee.

“Please, won’t you help me?” she implored, laying her hand over Neji’s where it rested on the table.

Neji stiffened and was about to pull away, then his eyes flicked to Tenten and he turned towards the client with a smile that didn’t quite reach his blank eyes and laid his other hand over top of hers.

“Of course, miss,” he said graciously. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Oh, thank you!” The girl fluttered her eyelashes at Neji and smiled winsomely.

Tenten forcibly reminded herself that it was in bad form to daydream about stabbing a client. 

Neji led Tenten and Lee away into the client’s study where they could talk without being overheard. 

“So from what we can tell, this stalker has been tracking her movements, memorizing her routines from the looks of things,” Neji concluded. “I’m guessing that this isn’t some clumsy admirer, but the work of a shinobi who wants her to know she’s being watched and followed but has been very careful to keep their identity from being discovered.”

“This is true!” Lee said, nodding enthusiastically as he reread his notes. “Notice that every time they have become aware of the stalker’s presence, they have been unable to describe anything about his appearance, no footprints, not even a direction of movement. We have no samples of handwriting, no one has ever heard his voice, no traces of chakra, he may as well not exist.”

“What if he doesn’t exist?” Tenten demanded. “What if she just cooked the whole thing up?”

“That is a possibility,” Neji agreed carefully. “But it is important that we take her claims seriously. That is the last option we should explore if everything else leads to dead ends.”

“I don’t know,” Tenten continued, anger bubbling up inside her uncontrollably. “A lonely, sheltered girl might just come up with a story like that and insist that she needs some gullible young ninja to come rushing to her aid.”

Neji’s eyes snapped up to stare at her, seeming to look right through her eyes into the back of her skull. “Are you calling me gullible, Tenten?”

“I’m just saying you seemed awfully taken in by her,” Tenten fired back.

Neji’s upper lip peeled back in a sneer. “And why do you care?”

“Of course I care if my team leader is too -”

“Stop it!” Lee cried, stepping between them. “What are you fighting about? We know this girl is not lying, Tenten!”

“Sorry,” Tenten muttered. She turned away, wrapping her arms around herself and hunching her shoulders. She could practically feel Neji’s triumphant smirk. 

“If you’re quite finished Tenten, then it’s time we made a plan.”

* * * * *

Nightfall found Tenten still stewing as she sat in the armchair in the corner of their clients’ room, listening to her chatter about how handsome and gracious Neji was as she prepared herself for bed.

“What’s it like working with him?” She asked suddenly.

“It’s a real treat,” Tenten said impatiently. “Go to sleep. We want to see if this stalker is aware of your sleeping habits and we can’t do that if you stay up later than normal to ask questions about Neji.”

“Oh, right.” The girl climbed into bed and lay there pouting at the ceiling.

Tenten rolled her eyes. It was going to be a very long night. Of course she was the one who was stuck in the client’s room while Lee patrolled the back garden and Neji kept watch on the roof. Sometimes, she reflected, being the only kunoichi on a team was a real pain in the ass.

The hours dragged by slowly and the girl’s breathing finally deepened into sleep. Tenten was staring at the ceiling, thinking once again about the night before, when she heard the noises in the back garden; the sharp clang of metal on metal, the muted thud of a fist meeting flesh, ragged breathing and quiet curses. She was on her feet with a scroll in her hand in an instant. 

Someone was in the house, someone was racing up the stairs. Tenten concentrated on the presence and was relieved to recognize Lee. He burst through the bedroom door limping and clutching a wound in his side that left a trail of blood over the floorboards.

“Tenten,” he gasped. “You are okay!” 

“Nothing’s happened in here, Lee,” Tenten reassured him. “Were you attacked?”

Lee nodded. “Five of them. Took off to the south. Cannot find Neji anywhere.”

Tenten’s blood turned cold in her veins.

“We cannot worry about that now,” Lee said urgently. “Tenten, they were in the woods watching the house. I surprised them. We fought and they fled as soon as they realized I would not be killed easily. But this time they left a trail.”

“I’m on it,” Tenten agreed, bolting for the window.

“Be careful,” Lee called after her. “Find out where they are going but do not let them see you!”

“Patch yourself up and keep looking for Neji,” Tenten called back and she threw herself out into the night air.

It was just as Lee said. In the woods at the edge of the garden, she found the signs of Lee’s battle with the intruders and a trail leading away to the south. It appeared that he had been able to injure a few of them at least as badly as they had done to him. They were moving fast and the trail of blood and stumbling footsteps was easy to follow even in the pale light of a slim crescent moon.

Tenten leapt from branch to branch, swift, agile, silent. The deeper into the forest she went, the fainter the trail became. She knew that this must mean that the fleeing shinobi were collecting themselves, perhaps carrying their wounded, making a greater effort to conceal their tracks and therefore moving more slowly. This meant there was a chance she would lose the trail before she reached them but at least it left them with some lead to follow in the morning. She began leaving her own marks in the bark of trees with a kunai, ensuring she could find this place again. She refused to think about where Neji had gone or why Lee couldn’t find him.

A kunai whistled past, catching in the seam of her shirt and pinning it to the tree trunk behind her. As she reached to pull it free, a second knife pierced the cuff of her glove, pinning her wrist against the tree as well. 

With her free hand, she pressed a scroll against the trickle of blood running down her arm from the cuff of her glove, summoning up a long knife which she used to block the next few kunai. A pair of feet alighted at the end of the branch and sauntered towards her, a kunai flashed as it was twirled around one manicured finger.

“Konoha, hmm?” a soft voice said. 

“Who are you?” Tenten demanded. “What do you want?”

The kunoichi came closer, and Tenten was able to see a lithe form, a masked face, dark hair tied in a knot on top of her head. There was no metallic glint of a headband anywhere. Even rogue ninjas usually still had a headband. 

“It’s all just politics,” the kunoichi said, almost apologetically. “We thought if we scared the old man a little by shadowing his daughter, it would put enough pressure on him that he might vote in a certain direction.”

“But you never made any demands like that,” Tenten protested.

“No,” the kunoichi sighed. “As you see, he’s too dense to take the hint. So we’re going to have to be a little more forceful. With you Leaf kids here, he feels safe to stick to his principles. So we’ve got to get you out of the way, and then we’re going to take the girl and use her as. . . leverage.”

“Not a chance,” Tenten scoffed, gripping the hilt of her knife a little tighter and tearing herself loose from the blades that held her clothes against the tree bark. The other kunoichi caught her wrist so fast Tenten didn’t even see her move. She twisted it around on an impossible angle and the knife slipped from Tenten’s fingers and plunged into the darkness below as her bones popped and cracked. 

Tenten bit down on a scream and lashed out with a kick, but the kunoichi only tightened her grip and sidestepped, sweeping Tenten’s other leg out from under her so she crashed face down on the branch. A knee came down between her shoulder blades, pressing all the air out of her lungs and there was a stinging at the side of her throat, like a mosquito bite. She caught the glint of the needle’s point as the kunoichi withdrew it and suddenly the world around her went hazy. The stars above the leaf canopy blurred into a whirl of soft light, the sharp pain in her wrist faded into a heavy numbness, the rough bark beneath her cheek became flowing satin. Dimly she was aware of the kunoichi moving away, busying herself near the trunk of the tree. Unconcerned, she watched the kunoichi’s lips move, still speaking words she couldn’t hear, and then she leapt away into the night as the paper bombs she had planted along the tree trunk flared to life. The live edges danced in Tenten’s vision, dazzling her. Something in the back of her mind was screaming for her to move, to get away, but she was drifting on a peaceful current, admiring the pretty lights as they got brighter. . . brighter. . . and then darkness.

* * * * *

She was being rocked back and forth. On a ship? No. She was being held up by two arms. Someone walking. She was being carried. Her head had tipped back over the person’s arm and was swaying from side to side with every step. 

Something soft swept across her face, tickling her eyelids. She caught a faint hint of the scent of spring rain.

So she was dreaming then. 

“Neji.”

“Yes, Tenten, I’m here.” His voice was closer than she expected it to be. Was Neji carrying her then?

“Where’re you taking me?”

“Home.” There was a strange, raw edge to Neji’s voice. As though he had shouted himself hoarse, or had cried for hours. That was ridiculous though. Neji never cried.

“Am I dreaming, Neji?” She asked. The swaying of her head was starting to make her dizzy. Drawing breath was difficult, as though there was a great weight pushing down on her chest.

“No, you’re awake, finally.”

Slowly Tenten began to remember. The mission, the other kunoichi. The kunai, the needle and the paper bombs.

“I must be dead.”

“No.” She could feel Neji shaking his head hard. Strands of hair flicked across her face, the side of her neck. “No. Still alive and you’ll stay that way.”

“Neji?”

“Yes?”

“My wrist hurts.”

“I know, Tenten.” His voice sounded even more ragged now than it had before. “It’s broken.”

“Oh.” 

They came to a stop and the world spun horribly beneath Tenten’s dangling head. He lowered her to the ground, propping her against a smooth, sunwarmed boulder which protruded from the grass. Tenten struggled to open her eyes and found Neji crouched beside her, an expression of worry contorting his usually smooth features. 

“I’m so dizzy,” she told him.

“The after effects of the drug should wear off soon,” he said. “What a cowardly thing to do, drugging you and surrounding you with exploding tags. Those were no shinobi.”

“She didn’t have a headband,” Tenten remembered suddenly. 

“No. I’m willing to bet that they were never trained in a ninja village, formidable as they might have been,” Neji said. “The ones I fought certainly had no regard for fighting honourably either.”

Tenten peered at Neji, trying to see him clearly through the haze that still hung over her eyes. “Are you hurt?”

“No, but it was a close thing. Lee’s a little bit the worse for wear, but he’ll be fine. He’s stayed behind until the back up team arrives.”

Neji’s eyes were red rimmed, his face blotchy and puffy.

“Were you crying?” Tenten whispered. She tried to reach out, to touch his face, but her arm was too heavy and dropped back to her side.

“When I found you,” Neji said slowly. You were lying in the splintered, burning remnants of a tree and you were . . . I thought you were dead.”

“You’d cry if I was dead?” Tenten didn’t know why that made her feel as happy as she did.

“I know you’ve been drugged,” Neji replied. “So I’ll forgive you this once for asking such a stupid question.”

“Never seen you cry before.”

“Yes, well, now you’ve made me cry twice in as many days.” Neji attemped to sound lighthearted but failed.

“Twice?” Tenten repeated, struggling to rewind her memory.

“I saw you,” Neji admitted. “With. . . him.”

“Shion?”

“If that’s his name, yes. Your  _ boyfriend _ .” He spat the last word out as though it had singed his tongue.

“Not my boyfriend,” Tenten corrected, still struggling to make sense of what was going on. “Ino set us up so I could forget about you. Didn’t work.”

“It looked like it did.” 

Tenten had learned over the years that Neji had a way of sharpening his words until they were more cutting than any blade she owned.

Tenten tried to sit up a little straighter, her chest still felt numb and horribly heavy, her splinted wrist protested every time she moved. 

“Clearly you can’t see everything, Neji,” she retorted, some of her anger finally breaking through the surface of the hazy numbness in her mind. “And what right do you have to be jealous anyway? It could have been you, I wanted it to be you, but you said no.”

“Because I had to,” Neji burst out. “Not because I wanted to.”

Tenten stared at him, too stunned to react.

“And I know that you can go out with whomever you want and I have no right to say or do anything about it, but it still . . . hurt.” 

Tenten’s heart felt like it was being squeezed inside a vice even as it tried to beat its way out of her chest. She pressed a hand over it and found layers of gauze and tape.

“What happened to me?” she murmured.

“Like I said.” Neji seemed glad for even this horrible change of topic. “You were very badly injured in the explosion. I had to put seals over the wounds to stabilize you. As it is, I need to get you to Tsunade as quickly as I can.”

“So,” Tenten whispered. “You saw Shion kiss me and then you went home and cried about it?”

“Does it really matter Tenten? Can’t you just leave it alone?”

“No. Why did you cry?”

Neji glared at her but she refused to flinch. “Because I didn’t actually want to break things off with you in the first place, and my only solace was that maybe you missed me as much as I missed you. I know I told you to move on, but that didn’t make it any easier to see.”

“If you didn’t want to break it off, then why did you?” Tenten demanded.

“Were you listening to me at all?” Neji stormed. “I have nothing to offer you except for pain and a cage. I care about you too much to do that to you.”

“Then why were you flirting with the client?” 

“Because I was trying to make you jealous too,” Neji hissed.

“Oh.” Tenten considered that for a moment. “Neji, I’m sorry but that’s just stupid.”

“Yes, I know that,” he admitted. “Stupid, selfish, and immature.”

“You do have something to offer me though,” Tenten whispered

“Like what?” Tenten swore she saw a tiny glimmer of hope in his eyes, an expression that silently pleaded for her to say something that would make this right again.

“Yourself,” she told him. 

He blinked slowly.

“It’s like I told you,” she reminded him. “I wasn’t asking you to marry me, I was just asking you out.”

“That amounts to the same thing.” He shook his head sadly.

“Um, what?” Tenten tried to shake off the last of the drug fog and force herself to sit up straight.

“You’re my best friend,” Neji said softly. “More important to me than anybody else. I can live with us just being friends, even if that’s not all I want. If we were to become something more than that, do you really think we could be anything less than all in? How am I supposed to accept what you’re offering me, knowing it can only be mine for a short time, that eventually a day will come when you’d need to leave me for someone who could offer you a proper future?”

“A proper future,” Tenten repeated scathingly. “Is that what you think I want, Neji? Marriage and babies and a house or some nonsense? Do you know me at all?”

“We’re only young, Tenten,” Neji insisted. “You could change your mind when you get older.”

“Neji, listen carefully.” Tenten pressed a hand against her bandaged chest in an attempt to force her heart to slow its pace. “I love you. I don’t want anyone or anything but you.”

“You can’t, Tenten,” Neji whispered, but all the resolve had gone out of his voice. “I shouldn’t let you do this to yourself.”

“That’s not your choice.”

Neji kissed her then, one hand smoothing over her cheek, as softly and carefully as he had on Gai-sensei’s balcony so long ago. His lips were chapped and it stung when his tongue slid over a cut on her lip she had not noticed, but it was like the first rain after a long draught, the first thaw of spring, ice over a burn. 

Too soon, Neji pulled away. Tenten was afraid to look him in the eyes, certain that she would only have to watch him turn cold towards her once again, denouncing this as a bad idea. But Neji didn’t pull away, instead he leaned his cheek against the centre of her bandaged chest, as though listening to her heart, and let out a long slow breath. 

“Who am I kidding, Tenten?” he whispered into the gauze. “I don’t have the strength to keep turning you away, and I don’t want to.”

“So what does that mean?” Tenten asked. She wanted to put her arms around him, to stroke his hair, but she was too weak to even lift her hand.

Neji lifted his head again and looked at her for a long moment, considering. “I can’t be your boyfriend, not properly. We can’t go on dates, and no one can ever know about it, lest it get back to my clan. That’s just too dangerous for you. But we can be friends and still be like this can’t we?”

“Yes,” Tenten decided. “We can.”

“And I promise,” Neji told her. “That when you finally do find someone better than me, that when you realize I have nothing to offer, I won’t try to stop you. I’ll be happy for you. And I’ll consider myself lucky for having been allowed to even just this little bit of your love.”

Tenten rolled her eyes. “I guess asking you not to be an insufferable dumbass is too much then?”

Neji glared at her for a moment and then stood up. “You’re not out of the woods yet, and we need to get to Tsunade. We’ve stopped for too long already.”

He lifted her up and continued walking.

“Why don’t you carry me on your back?” Tenten wondered. “It would be easier.”

Neji shook his head. “Until Tsunade is able to look after you, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Neji,” Tenten ventured. “How do you really feel about me?”

“You’re my best friend, Tenten,” Neji said, face impassive. “Please stop asking me that question.”

* * * * *

“Knock, knock!” Shion stuck his head through the half open door of the hospital room and Tenten froze, a spoonful of jello halfway to her mouth.

Neji continued shuffling the deck of cards as though he hadn’t seen or heard anything, but Lee rocketed out of his chair, nearly knocking it over.

“Hello!” he all but shouted. “My name is Rock Lee! Who are you?”

Shion blinked rapidly and took a step back, then collected himself and offered Lee his hand, smiling. “My name is Shion. I’m a friend of Tenten’s.

“Oh! You are that guy that Ino set her up with! Excellent!”

“Um, yeah. I suppose I am that,” Shion agreed as Lee shook his hand enthusiastically.

“So you are here to see Tenten then! Come on, Neji!” Lee grabbed Neji by the back of his shirt and all but dragged him out of the hospital room so fast that he didn’t even have time to protest.

“Um,” Shion said, looking at the door.

“He’s always like that.” Tenten shrugged.

“Wow.” Shion shook his head. “So, uh, how are you feeling?”

“Remarkably good for someone who was drugged and bombed.” She didn’t tell him that she was feeling less good since he had arrived. This was going to be an awkward conversation.

“I brought you this.” He offered her a chocolate bar. “I know hospital food is awful.”

“Thank you,” Tenten said sincerely.

“Listen,” Shion started. “I had a really great time with you the other night, but I came here to um, tell you that my girlfriend wants to give it another try, and I said yes. So. . .”

A massive weight lifted itself from Tenten’s bandaged chest. “That’s okay, Shion, really. I’m happy for you.”

“Really?”

“Well yeah.” Tenten went back to work on her jello cup. “We only went out once, it’s not like you owe me anything.”

“Oh, okay good,” Shion said, visibly relieved.

“Truth be told,” Tenten decided to come clean. “I was going to tell you it wouldn’t work out anyway. I’ve got feelings for someone else, and I just can’t get rid of them.”

“Oh!” Shion laughed. “Well good luck then!”

“Same to you.”

They shook hands and Shion let himself out of the hospital room. Neji and Lee reappeared almost immediately.

“So that was him?” Lee asked. “Ino wasn’t lying then!”

“Mm hmm, he came to tell me that he’s getting back together with his ex,” Tenten said lightly. In the corner of her eye, she saw Neji’s lip twitch into a smile before he schooled his features back to neutral.

“Well, that’s too bad,” he said, dealing the cards into three hands onto the overbed table.

“That is terrible!” Lee cried.

“Not really,” Tenten reassured him. “He didn’t really do it for me.”

Lee looked back and forth between Neji’s studied carelessness and Tenten’s smug smile.

“Again?” he cried. 

“Well, I suppose we did have to tell Lee,” Neji grumbled.

“So what does this mean?” Lee was on his feet now.

“Nothing,” Neji insisted. “Calm down. We’re not dating, we’re just friends. . . but also more.”

“That is ridiculous!” Lee fumed. 

“Lee, it’s fine,” Tenten said soothingly.

“No, it is not!” Lee pointed at them threateningly. “If you two start fighting again, I will. . . I will . . . I will be very upset with you!”

“Okay, so no fighting,” Neji agreed. “Sit down.”

“I need to go for a run!” Lee dashed out of the hospital room.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have told him,” Neji worried.

Tenten snorted. “If he’s running, it’s to find Sakura and tell her everything. He’s fine.”

Neji glared at her. “You were going to tell Sakura everything anyway, weren’t you?”

“And Ino,” Tenten admitted. “And Hinata.”

“I already told Hinata.” 

“You don’t worry about Hinata?” Tenten wondered. “She’s part of the head family.”

“No,” Neji said very seriously. “I never worry about Hinata when it comes to stuff like this.”

“And what about Lee?” Tenten went on. “Were you lying to him when you said we wouldn’t fight again?”

Neji sighed. “Listen Tenten, I still think we’re setting ourselves up for disaster, but at this point I don’t see how it could be more painful than what we were already doing. And for you, I’m. . . I’m willing to take the chance.”

“Come here,” Tenten demanded, reaching out to him. Neji stood up and stepped closer to the bed, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead he gathered her in his arms and pressed his face into the side of her neck. He held her for a long time, his eyelashes fluttering against her skin, his hair falling across her face. Tenten clung to him as though her life depended on it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!! I would love to hear what you think, and if you'd like, you can drop in and say hello to me on [tumblr](https://lilac-writes.tumblr.com/).


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